Quotes about parents
page 4

“Your being born makes your parents God. You owe them your life, and they can control you. Then puberty makes you Satan, just because you want something better.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Life, God

“I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Hate, Funny

“We are not our parents, Gabriel. We do not have to carry the burden of their choices or their sins.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“Shapeshifter parenting motto—if your kid slits somebody's throat, always have a backup plan to make the body disappear.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

“If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, emphatic, consistent, loving parent.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Love, Understanding

“Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. We need them to tell us. We need them to say, "I know you, Al. You are not the kind of man who.”

Richard Russo book Straight Man

Source: Straight Man

Children

“I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Love, Way, Water, For Parents

“Of course they didn't give us this much, Sage. But I had to make sure I nailed my first assignment. Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

Perfection

“I hoped I wasn't actually dead. That would make finding our parents and saving the world really hard.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: School's Out—Forever

World, Hope, Dead

“… I'd been raised by my parents to believe barfing your feelings on other people was the height of impoliteness…”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

People, Feeling

“There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

Children

“Parents, teachers, government - they all teach you how to live the dreary, deadening life of a slave, but nobody teaches you how to live normally.”

Ryū Murakami book In the Miso Soup

Source: In the Miso Soup (1997)

Life, Teachers

“As Oscar Wilde once said, "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“God is even in a single parent household.”

Karen Salmansohn American writer

Source: Even God is Single:

God

“There was something I wanted, something I envisioned, loving parents, a happy home with everyone smiling at me. A home that no one would ever want to leave, a warm place, a warm person. It exists, I know it does”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Love, Happiness, Smile, Home

“down with hell and heaven and all the religious fuss
infinity pleased our parents
one inch looks good to us”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Hell

“Dr. Martinez: "I take it you don't want me to call your parent?"
Max: "Uh, no." Hello, lab? May I speak to the test tube please?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“I’ve never heard of a man being so eager to confess to the parent of a girl he’s just ruined”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Secrets of a Summer Night

Girl

“It was sad, the imbalance of it all. Why do kids assume so much from one parent and hold the other to a lower, looser standard?”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Sadness

“But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Feeling, Fight, For Parents

“This letter is written on the skin of one of the water sprites who drowned your parents.'
'Ick!' I cried, and dropped the letter on the kitchen table.”

Charlaine Harris Dead in the Family

Source: Dead in the Family

Water

“Parents. Honestly. Sometimes they really do think the world revolves around them.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

Source: Does My Head Look Big In This?

World, Thinking, For Parents

“anybody can be a princess. all you have todo is have the right parents. it's no harder than being born Paris Hilton, for God's sake.

at least you remember to put on underwear in the morning, i'm assuming”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Princess on the Brink

God, Princess

“I was very strict on that point. No devouring classmates." Jeremy rolled his eyes. "Other parents warn their kids not to talk to strangers. I had to warn mine not to eat them.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

“It's especially hard to admit that you made a mistake to your parents, because, of course, you know so much more than they do.”

Sean Covey (1964) author; business executive

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

For Parents

“Our parents were a test tube and a turkey baster.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

“Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, God, Birth, Nature

“All I can think of is the emaciated bodies of children on our kitchen table as my mother prescribes what the parent's can't give. More food.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Children, Food, Thinking

“The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Less Than Zero

Source: Less Than Zero

Children, People, Madness

“The job of every generation is to discover the flaws of the one that came before it. That's part of growing up, figuring out all the ways your parents and their friends are broken.”

Justine Larbalestier (1967) Australian young-adult fiction author

Source: Zombies Vs. Unicorns

Way, Parting

“A parent is inexcusable who does not personally teach her child to think.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: The Signature of All Things

Thinking, Personality

“Write as if your parents are dead.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Dead

“I'm not prepared for Rue's family. Her parents, whose faces are still fresh with sorrow. Her fiver younger siblings, who resemble her so closely. The slight builds, the luminous brown eyes. They form a flock of small dark birds.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Family, Bird, Siblings

“When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.”

Mem Fox (1946) Australian academic and children's writer known for picture books

Source: Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever

Reading

“First your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Life, For Parents

“He scarcely saw his parents. When Christopher was small, he was terrified that he would meet Papa out walking in the Park one day and not recognize him.”

Diana Wynne Jones book The Lives of Christopher Chant

Source: The Lives of Christopher Chant

“From biscuit to brides, if there is anything their children really want, parents have a problem.”

Chetan Bhagat book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Source: 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Children, Problem

“Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.”

Garrison Keillor book Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories

Leaving Home‎ (1987), p. 19
Source: Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories

“I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

For Parents

“So you interrupted my date to make fun of me for still living with my parents. Couldn't you have done that on a night I didn't have a date? That's most nights, in case you're curious.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Night

“We are the people our parents warned us about.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

People, For Parents

“Everyone else we knew growing up is the same: image of their parents, no matter how loud they told themselves they'd be different”

Tana French In the Woods

Source: In the Woods

“I'd been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parents' tragedy”

Alison Bechdel (1960) American cartoonist, author

Source: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

“In an ideal world, we would have been orphans. We felt like orphans and we felt deserving of the pity that orphans get, but embarrassingly enough, we had parents.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

World

“The thing about lying to your parents is, you have to do it to protect them.
It’s for their own good.”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

Lying, For Parents

“Siblings: children of the same parents, each of whom is perfectly normal until they get together.”

Sam Levenson (1911–1980) American journalist

Children, Siblings, Family

“When you lose your parents, the sadness doesn't go away. It just changes. It hits you sideways sometimes instead of head-on. Like now.”

Jude Watson book In Too Deep

Source: In Too Deep

Sadness, Change

“parenting isn't a noun but a verb--an ongoing process instead of an accomplishment. And that no matter how many years you put into the job, the learning curve is, well, fairly flat.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

Learning

“Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Children, Knowledge

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Children, Youth, Help, Childhood

“Ignorance is the parent of fear.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Fear

“Parents always make their worst mistakes with their oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.”

Orson Scott Card book Xenocide

Source: Xenocide

Children

“My parents are going to kill me!"
"That seems rather harsh…”

Garth Nix book Sir Thursday

Source: Sir Thursday

“Your parents could always hurt you, no matter how old you were.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Hurt

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

For Parents

“Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

“I just wish that God or my parents or Sam or my sister or someone would just tell me what's wrong with me. Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense. To make this all go away.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

God, Way, Sense, Sister

“From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

Love, Books, Laughter, Learning

“How is it possible that our parents lied to us?"

"Lets see: Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter bunny, um, God. You're the prettiest kid in school. This wont hurt a bit. Your face will freeze like that…"

"Everythings going to be alright.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Runaways, Vol. 1: Pride and Joy

God, School, Hurt

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

For Parents

“It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.”

Joyce Maynard (1953) American writer

Children, Sun

“Sadie," he said forlornly, "when you become a parent, you may understand this. One of my hardest jobs as a father, one of my greatest duties, was to realize that my own dreams, my own goals and wishes, are secondary to my children's.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Children, Dreams, Understanding

“I thought there were moments to complain about your parents and moments to be grateful, and it was a shame to mix those moments up.”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“we are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Women

“I would have made a terrible parent. The first time my child didn't do what I wanted, I'd kill him.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Time

“To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Source: Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female

“It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Education, Learning, Time, For Parents

“The truth is that all examples of child protection and parental care, and all associated bodily organs … are examples of the working in nature of the kin-selection principle.”

Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 6. Genesmanship

Truth, Nature

“We are all, I suppose, beholden to our parents - the question is, how much?”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Question

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Quoted in A Lifetime of Peace : Essential Writings by and About Thich Nhat Hanh (2003) edited by Jennifer Schwamm Willis, p. 141

People, For Parents

“But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I'd done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.

Instead I had Hell.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: Darkness, Be My Friend

World, Girl, Hell

“He looked like the sort of boy who'd come over to your house to pick you up for a date and be polite to your parents and nice to your pets. Jace, on the other hand, looked like the sort of boy who'd come over to your house and burn it down for kicks.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Boy, Housing

“In the midst of friends, home, and kind parents, she was alone.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

Source: Vanity Fair

Home

“I seriously think I could have sat in the middle of the kitchen floor rubbing two sticks together over a pile of dynamite blocks and gasoline cans, and my parents would be oblivious, as long as I was keeping myself occupied.”

Jordan Sonnenblick (1969) American writer

Source: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

Thinking

“In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“I was born to poor because of honest parents.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

“I’m not smarter than you, I’m more knowledgeable than you, and that’s only because I’m older than you. Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Children, Knowledge

“And if your parents have you for a reason, then that reason better exist. Because once it's gone, so are you.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child's courage.”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

Feeling, Courage, Hurt

“Nothing is ever quite right, is it, after a parent dies? No matter how well things go, something always feels slightly off…”

Jenna Blum book Het familieportret

Source: Those Who Save Us

Feeling

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Life

“Tape record your parents' laughter”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Source: Life's Little Instruction Book: 511 Suggestions, Observations, and Reminders on How to Live a Happy and Rewarding Life

Laughter

“Alec's trying to get Magnus to take him seriously, but he's never told our parents about Magnus, or even that he likes, you know -" "Warlocks?" Simon said.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“You, what are you? The brat of lucky parents who were related to a childless king. There is no such thing as royal blood. I believe we are what we make ourselves, and as such, you, Crown Princess, are nothing.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Princess

“I wish I could tell my parents, " If you want to help me, help me die.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Help

“I’ve met plenty of embarrassing parents, but Kronos, the evil Titan Lord who wanted to destroy Western Civilization? Not the kind of dad you invited to
school for Career Day.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

School, Evil

“Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

People

“Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.”

Ann Brashares book Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Love, World, Family, For Parents

“Having the freedom to read and the freedom to choose is one of the best gifts my parents ever gave me.”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Freedom, Reading

“I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

“Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Life, People, Strong

“Hi, Mom. (Devyn)
It’s the other parental unit. Not as pretty or as fierce as your mother, but loving nonetheless. (Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Ice

Love, Moms

“Parents had some kind of sin radar, Claire thought. They always called when you were in the middle of something you just knew they'd consider wrong. Or at least risky.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Midnight Alley

“Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either parent.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Love, Family

“Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Children, World

“Stop thinking about what I want, what he wants, what your parents want. What do YOU want?”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Thinking

“Look at it this way," Ms. Terwilliger said, after several moments of thought. "The callistana thinks of you two as its parents.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Way, Thinking

“My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were on their shelves.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Source: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

“All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

Life, Education, Behavior, Dependency

Quotes about parents page 4

Quotes about parents
page 4